Me Time: Why Work and Weekends Should Be Separate

The art of respecting your free time.

I started writing every day as an exercise in writing for pleasure. I have been writing for pretty much my entire life for fun, school, and profit, and so keeping my skills sharp is important to me. Plus, when I write as a job (seriously, I am a grant writer — it’s literally in the job title), it’s nice to be able to write what I want and have fun doing it.

However, when it comes to writing for profit instead of fun, I limit that to the work week as much as possible. My job is amazing, and I both legitimately enjoy doing it and get a lot of fulfillment from it. However, it is just that: a job. I don’t work long hours for the sake of looking good to my bosses, and I don’t work weekends unless there is an event that I am helping with.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t or won’t work extra hours if there’s work to be done. I have been known to work 50 and 60-hour weeks when there is a major project to be done. I just expect that I will be compensated as such with flex time or bonus pay. Generally speaking, when work is done for the day, so am I, and that is a hard rule.

Similarly, weekends are a sacred time of rest. I don’t work on weekends unless there is something major going on like a work event. If my boss needs my help on something — as a nonprofit, we hold occasional fundraisers — I will gladly help. I’m not a jerk and I won’t say no if asked nicely (or voluntold, as the case may be).

However, for most weekends a year, that is my time to rest, refresh, and practice self-care. If I don’t have a major project that needs weekend work and there isn’t an event, I don’t work. Simple as that. The same goes for my evenings. Once work is done, it’s done.

I’ve been known to be dragged back into action on a weekend or vacation by a call from my boss, but she knows that, by and large, people at our agency respect each other’s free time. The basic understanding is that, as long as our work is done, our free time is ours. We all put in extra hours from time to time, but when work is done, it’s done.

Generally speaking, I tend to think that work culture in America is too focused on the hustle. We are sold the idea that we should always be working, monetizing all of our hobbies and running ourselves ragged to bring in that extra dollar. I tend to think that’s stupid. If I chose to make extra money by dumping 80 hours of my week into work and side hustles, I’m pretty sure I’d have a nervous breakdown within six weeks, and I know lots of people who feel the same.

So many people work on evenings and weekends, don’t take all their vacation time, and devote their free time to hustling. While there are a handful of hyper-motivated people who can manage this kind of schedule, by and large, most of us have to rest our minds and bodies.

I’ve had that kind of schedule before, too. There was a point during my first part-time grant writing job that I was working for 12 or 13 days in a row between two jobs with only one or two days off in between. My writing job was in a busy season, so I was working three days a week there, and during what would’ve been my typical off day, I was working at my produce clerk job.

At the time that nonsense was going on, I was in my mid-20s. After the first long week, I was pleased with the money that I was bringing in. By the third long week, I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. I can think of at least one occasion where I had to spend five minutes in the back cooler trying to not have a nervous breakdown and just cry.

That’s not okay. Nobody should have to put up with that. I know that my bipolar makes me more open to mental breakdowns than many, but even a lot of neurotypical people would struggle with that.

So, when I got to my first full-time job, I was eager to kiss ridiculous hours and work weeks goodbye, and thankfully, the employer was amenable to that. Sure, there were times where I put in 50 or 60-hour weeks, but I got to flex my time and keep my weekends. Everyone wanted the work to get done since a lot of money was riding on it, but nobody wanted the person doing that writing to have a nervous breakdown.

Since then, I’ve come to enforce my evenings, weekends, and vacations as my time. I don’t do any job-related stuff, I don’t answer work emails, and I don’t do anything work-related that I hadn’t already figured out ahead of time. And, thankfully, my employer and my bosses agree with that idea, so by and large, they don’t bother me.

If you are in a position where you can enforce this kind of rule, I encourage you to do so. When you have your days off, whenever that may be, don’t do anything job-related. Don’t check your work email, don’t put 20 minutes into working on that report, and don’t answer work-related phone calls. That is your time and you have earned it.

And, if your workplace culture is such that you work on evenings and weekends, your workplace culture sucks and you should leave as quickly as possible. By and large, we need jobs to survive, but if you’re putting in long weeks and working on weekends because you think your employer “needs you,” you are almost definitely wrong.

Finding a better job with a better culture is good for you, and your former employer will likely have a replacement for you in a few months and nothing will have changed dramatically. If, however, your job will be incredibly put out because of your leaving due to some sort of knowledge you may have that is crucial to their operations, that’s their problem.

I’m quite serious about that. If your employer thought so poorly of you that they overworked you despite your crucial role and had no plan to replace that important piece, that’s their fault and they should’ve planned better. Anyone can get into a fatal car accident on the way to work or die from a heart attack in their sleep, and if your sudden loss would completely ruin the company, that seems like a structural flaw that they should’ve addressed sooner.

You do not owe your employer your life, nor are you an indentured servant to their whims. You are a human being, and you deserve better than to be treated poorly by an ungrateful boss. As such, you deserve to have a weekend to yourself without the burden of work.

I’m not saying to just quit your job without a safety net, of course — if you’re going to look for employment elsewhere, at least have a plan, But, if your concern is that your old job will miss you too much or that you’ll mess up their operations, don’t worry about that. It won’t be your problem when you’ve got a better job, and you can use your two weeks of notice to pass along the knowledge you’ve gained. You don’t have to leave on bad terms.

Time off is your time. Your employer needs to respect you enough to acknowledge that, and you need to respect yourself enough to enforce it. We all need a break to rest and recuperate, and if you push yourself to work through the weekend regularly, you’ll likely have a breakdown after too long, at which point you have no choice but to rest.

So, enjoy your weekends. Take all of your vacation time. Your employer will survive without you for a few days, probably even a few weeks or months. The only person you owe anything to is yourself; give yourself permission to relax, unwind, and enjoy your weekend. Your mental health will thank you.

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